heir rest. Jervis, Duncan, Nelson, Collingwood, and their
compeers, had yet to show what was in them as general officers. Lord
Hood alone remained; and he, although he had done deeds of great
promise, had come to the front too late in the previous war for his
reputation to rest upon sustained achievement as well as upon hopeful
indication. The great commands were given to these two: Hood, the
junior, going to the Mediterranean with twenty ships-of-the-line, Howe
taking the Channel Fleet of somewhat superior numbers.

The solid, deliberate, methodical qualities of the veteran admiral were
better adapted to the more purely defensive role, forced upon Great
Britain by the allied superiority in 1782, than to the continuous,
vigilant, aggressive action demanded by the new conditions with which he
now had to deal, when the great conflagration of the Revolution was to
be hemmed in and stamped out by the unyielding pressure and massive
blows of the British sea power. The days of regulated, routine
hostilities between rulers had passed away with the uprising of a
people; the time foretold, when nation should rise against nation, was
suddenly come with the crash of an ancient kingdom and of its social
order. An admirable organizer and indefatigable driller of ships, though
apparently a poor disciplinarian, Howe lacked the breadth of view, the
clear intuitions, the alacrity of mind, brought to bear upon the problem
by Jervis and Nelson, who, thus inspired, framed the sagacious plan to
which, more than to any other one cause, was due the exhaustion alike
of the Revolutionary fury and of Napoleon's imperial power. Keenly
interested in the material efficiency of his ships, as well as in the
precision with which they could perform necessary evolutions and
maintain prescribed formations, he sought to attain these ends by long
stays in port, varied by formal cruises devoted to secondary objects and
to fleet tactics. For these reasons also he steadfastly refused to
countenance the system of close-watching the enemy's ports, by the
presence before each of a British force adequate to check each movement
at its beginning.

Thus nursing ships and men, Howe flattered himself he should insure the
perfection of the instrument which should be his stay in the hour of
battle. Herein he ignored the fundamental truth, plainly perceived by
his successor, St. Vincent, that the effectiveness of a military
instrument consists more in the method of its